I was going to grind hundreds of hours of Blue Mage...

[CNitsah]

I was planning to continue leveling blue mage because I like blue mage.

I was planning to continue leveling blue mage despite hating it because they surely will put some TT card behind the completion of the story (god I wish they wouldn't).

[TheMightyMollusk]

I'll save my outrage for something that I'd actually want.

[Fawkes]

The Shadow Wolf is a raid boss mount from the Eden series, which would have made it a pretty suitable candidate for BLU. I would go as far to argue that the reward for completing raids on BLU this time around is likely to be a simple title when in reality it should have been this mount.

BLU got a morbol for doing coil and alexander raids. The Twintania mount is from the invite-a-friend campaign. There have been lots of mounts that you could only get from PvP that were things from other content, like ADS or the Magitek Conveyor. By now people should know not to expect SE to give thematically appropriate mounts. If you look at some non-beast tribe datamined mount and think "this would make a ton of sense as the reward for ____" then you should know by now that you're probably not gonna get it there.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Im just doing Blue Mage because I like Blue Mage. The reward is 2nd value to me. Heck I still have yet to get the Morbol mount even though its cool. I just dont have it in mind for the drive to get it.

Cant we just express how lame something is without having to be all dramatic about it? I hate that the Shadowkeeper mount is tied to the cash shop as much as the next guy but its not enough for me to prevent me from wanting to have fun with the new Blue Magic spells we'll be getting this update.

[Renalt]

I think we need 7 more threads on the same issue before nothing changes.

maybe 8.

[Nav_Fae]

BLU got a morbol for doing coil and alexander raids. The Twintania mount is from the invite-a-friend campaign. There have been lots of mounts that you could only get from PvP that were things from other content, like ADS or the Magitek Conveyor. By now people should know not to expect SE to give thematically appropriate mounts. If you look at some non-beast tribe datamined mount and think "this would make a ton of sense as the reward for ____" then you should know by now that you're probably not gonna get it there.

At this point in time, it has created a pattern that raid bosses are mog station purchases. They could datamine Hippokampos from Pandemonium floor 2 and it's probably going to be mog station at this point. I agree that in-game mount quality has taken a dip but it makes logical sense to me that the PAID mounts need to be worth your dollar or why bother buying them.

[Eorzean_username]

So... People are just unhappy they gotta pay is all, instead of raid reward.

No, that's really not it.

You're extrapolating a part of the overall concept, and attempting to magnify it into the entire premise.

It's technically true that people are "upset that they have to pay", but that is not the entirety of the complaint — as can be seen from the fact that raiding itself requires paying (for the game, for the expansions, for the subscription fee).

More completely, it's that they have to pay "for something which has no direct relation to gameplay", and therefore, is not perceived as a reward or an accomplishment — making it feel meaningless and, depending on the individual, insulting.

You would probably see a high overlap of displeasure reactions with roughly the same segment of players if, for example, the actual Eden mount (from Promise F4Sp2) became available for 1 gil from a Moogle vendor as part of a celebration event, or TOP Glamours became available for Moogle Tomes at the next "please gods, please stay subscribed" farming event.

I think the core issue for these players is that they place a lot of value on the perceived accomplishments that they achieve by "playing the game" and "overcoming challenges", and items like Savage Boss mounts have come to symbolize those achievements to them.

So, they become defensive about seeing those models now being taken out of the Savage Raiding scene, and instead handed out for, essentially, "free" — not in terms of dollar amounts, but in terms of "effort" and "gameplay challenge".

Of course it swings both ways, and you also see players who resent having to practice and clear Savage to get a flying pink fetus with gills, and so on, and would rather just sacrifice part of their paycheck — and certainly, you can put a "price" on Savage mounts if you wanted to (either literally, through purchasing carries, or abstractly, through calculating what else could have been earnt during the hours spent learning and clearing the raid for X weeks).

But in reference to the segment of the playerbase that objects to mounts like Cruise Chaser and Shadowkeeper on the cash shop, I think it's definitely more complicated than just "I have to pay money".

[Atelier-Bagur]

At this point in time, it has created a pattern that raid bosses are mog station purchases. They could datamine Hippokampos from Pandemonium floor 2 and it's probably going to be mog station at this point. I agree that in-game mount quality has taken a dip but it makes logical sense to me that the PAID mounts need to be worth your dollar or why bother buying them.

eehh I still say the "mount quality" is subjective at best. The Shadowkeeper mount is cool, but theres still just as good obtainable in-game mounts. At least its not like in other MMOs where they're not even trying to hide the fact that literally the best design cosmetics are behind the cash shop. I feel FFXIV has a good balance with its cosmetics vs cash shop ratio. But thats just me.

[ForteNightshade]

=For the record i'm not saying it needed to be a blu reward or a raid reward, it could've been an easy achievement or a quest reward, even MGP.

Now think about it from Square Enix's perspective. They could design a unique mount and either write a whole quest chain, dump it in the Gold Saucer where they know everyone has more MGP than they know what to do with or... make a profit off of it. Are you at all surprised which they landed on? People need to accept they aren't going to do quest chains just to give you a free mount. You can certainly argue the mog station is getting excessive or any number of complaints as is your prerogative. They aren't going to change it.

Not to mention, putting Shadowkeeper in some easy achievement or as a MGP reward would devalue it more or less in the same way. The whole point of argument for it being a Blue Mage rewards is it fit thematically with Blue Mage tackling the Eden series and required actual effort. Making it a MGP reward doesn't exactly accomplish that

[KitingGenbu]

It has been a while since they did something like this.....last one was odin's horse wasn't it?